Detroit Red Wings: The Battle Between The Pipes

The Detroit Red Wings have a unique goalie situation with Jimmy Howard and Petr Mrazek. Which netminder will save Hockeytown?

Heading into the 2015-2016 NHL season, Detroit Red Wings’ Head Coach Jeff Blashill knew he had a unique goaltender situation on his hands. Not a goalie controversy per se, more like a goaltender battle. Jimmy Howard had been the starting goalie for the Red Wings for six years and had done an impressive job. Petr Mrazek only had 35 career games under his belt, but he seemed ready for an increased workload after a stellar 2015 campaign.

Because of the unexpected rise of Mrazek, Blashill and General Manager Ken Holland were given an interesting choice. Do they trade Howard? Or give Mrazek a full season as Howard’s back up? Both Howard and Mrazek seemed able to handle the goaltending responsibilities on their own and make the other guy expendable. Instead of handing the reigns to one goalie over the other, it was announced that the two would split time, essentially playing as 1A and 1B.

The reasoning behind this was never announced by Blashill or Holland. Was reducing Howard’s time supposed to light a fire under him to improve his play? Or was this a case of slowly easing Mrazek into the league before giving him the full-time duties? It is likely that Holland thought that one of those two scenarios would end up being true, and he’d let the season play out and the situation would figure itself out on its own.

Two and a half months into the Red Wings’ season,management is no closer to naming a full-time starter than they were over the summer, but so far that’s a good thing. Mrazek has started 15 games while Howard has started 13. First glance at the numbers show their performances have been nearly identical as well; Mrazek holds a slight edge in save percentage .924 compared to Howard’s .921, but Howard leads in GAA at 2.25 versus Mrazek’s 2.41.

The Red Wings do slightly better with Howard in goal, going 7-4-2 (1.23 points earned per game) while the team has gone 8-4-3 (1.19 points earned per game) when Mrazek has started. Across the board, it seems Mrazek and Howard have been neck and neck.

If you want to dig a little deeper, the edge in starts to go to Petr Mrazek. In Even Strength situations, Mrazek’s save percentage is better at .946 compared to Howard’s at .930. Even when looking at Adjusted Shooting Percentage, which takes in to account the quality of shots that a goaltender faces based on where in the ice the shooting player is, Mrazek still has better numbers: .941 to .925.

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Everywhere you look the numbers are close. You can’t say one player has been significantly better than the other, especially with neither playing more than 15 games. Still, the leader in the clubhouse at this point has to be Mrazek. Jimmy Howard has better numbers when comparing goals against and overall records, but those two statistics, while still important, are more dependant on the team’s play as a whole.

When Howard started opening night versus Toronto, he allowed zero goals and got the win, despite the relatively easy workload of just 22 shots. Mrazek meanwhile saved 37 shots from Montreal a few nights later, but was given a loss because the rest of the team couldn’t get the offense going for him.

All a goalie is asked to do is to stop the puck as much as he can, and leave the rest of the game to the skaters. When simplifying it like that, Mrazek has done a slightly better job than Howard.

The season is still early, we’re less than a third of the way through the schedule. Despite the fact that Mrazek’s numbers are better than Howard’s by a razor-thin margin, it’s too soon to start screaming “NAME MRAZEK THE STARTER!”  Mrazek has never played a full NHL season in his career, and we’re obviously dealing with a small sample size in the stats department.

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Both goalies are playing well, and that’s really all Blashill and co. could have asked for. With this being the opposite of a controversy, the Red Wings might currently have the best goalie “situation” in the league.